2020 Election, Foreign Policy, Politics, Realist Theory

An American Nationalist Voting Index – Speaking Softly

Bob Claude |

This is part of a series examining the issues in the presidential election. To see other articles in the series, click on the “2020 Elections” link on the Home page

Score

Biden -2.5 Trump +1.5

While Theodore Roosevelt often engaged in bellicose rhetoric, his foreign policy while president relied more on negotiation and adroit diplomacy to advance American interests. For example, Roosevelt relied on his diplomatic connections more than military power in avoiding an intervention by Germany in Venezuela to collect overdue debt. TR knew U.S. foreign policy needed to change to adapt to new challenges. In his time, it had to adapt by becoming more active in the world.    

As I mentioned in my posts on the History and Future of Nationalism, the world has changed again. The pursuit of liberal hegemony since the end of the Cold War has been proven to be unsustainable. Meanwhile, the rise of China, Russia, India and other regional powers ushered in a dynamic multi-polar system.  Trump‘s election in 2016 was a repudiation of the liberal model. Much of the change since then has been simply talk, but talk in foreign policy can also be substantive.  Nevertheless, foreign policy remains one of the sharpest contrasts between the two candidates.

Realist Foreign Policy

As I have argued previously, the new National Security Strategy promulgated by Trump in 2018 is one of the most important and least understood changes in modern American foreign policy. It rejects the globalist liberal crusade to spread Western values throughout the world and expressly adopts the realist strategy, which holds that international relations is a contest among nations, especially great powers, and that America’s only foreign policy goal should be to preserve its own national security and way of life. The text has its flaws, but it remains a watershed moment in recent history. Trump deserves a +1 for this achievement. 

In contrast, Biden supported the liberal globalist model in the Senate and as part of the Obama Administration.  There are encouraging signs that some of his current advisors recognize the failures of this strategy as discussed in this article from the DefenseOne website.   However, both Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris still focus on human rights rather than the real economic and geopolitical dangers we face. Thus, a Biden-Harris Administration would most likely return to the liberal model and so deserves a -1 rating. 

NATO Expansion

The American commitment to NATO is based on the post-World War II socioeconomic weakness of Europe in the face of looming Soviet Communist expansionism.  It is past time to reduce our commitment since Europe now has the capability to defend itself against Russian aggression.  President Trump has talked about this, but his substantive policy has been quite the opposite.  Much handwringing occurred when the administration announced the withdrawal of 9,000 troops from Germany. However, instead of coming home, they are destined for redeployment in Poland.  Moreover, we agreed to admit North Macedonia, a tiny remnant of the old Yugoslavia, to NATO, and thus to defend it even though it has no relationship to any real threat to the US.  Trump thus has failed to accomplish anything of substance in this area and deserves a zero.

However, Biden’s stated policy is worse. As the DefenseOne article mentions, he supports releasing Europe from the goal to  increase their defense expenditures to 2% of GDP in exchange for “cooperation” on China and Middle Eastern issues.  This ignores the fact that Europeans have very different views on those issues.  This would allow them to piggyback on our defense support while giving up little in return. It thus earns Biden another -1. 

Withdrawal from the Middle East

Perhaps nowhere has liberal hegemony failed so disastrously as in the Middle East. Rather than attempting to solve its centuries-old intractable problems, we should be supporting the development of an internal balance of power and become simply an offshore balancer (see this previous post). Unfortunately, neither candidate fully embraces this approach. Trump abandoned the JCPOA with Iran that controlled its nuclear development and instead threatened military action.  He has reduced, but not eliminated, the number of combat troops in Syria and Afghanistan.  On the positive side, the administration engineered the recognition of Israel by the UAE and encouraged its tacit alliance with Saudi Arabia. This lays the groundwork for a balance of power in the region between an Arab-Israeli coalition vs. Iran.  However, the lack of strategic coordination between all these policies earns Trump only a zero on this subject. 

Meanwhile, Biden supports trying to renew the JCPOA, but calls Saudi Arabia a “pariah state”.   While supporting military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Middle East in principle, he then conditions it on effective control of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.  Immigration and economic sanctions would be as effective in preventing them from attacking the US.   Biden’s approach does nothing to achieve a realist solution in the region and thus earns him a zero as well. 

China

China presents a multifaceted geopolitical, trade and domestic challenge to America.  President Xi Jin-Peng’s increasingly totalitarian rule and bid for world power came as a shock to globalist elites. It should not have surprised anyone with any knowledge of Chinese history and culture. President Trump rightly alerted the world to the danger and has successfully controlled some of their influence, notably through his campaign against Huawei. However, he has failed to build the global consensus necessary to effectively contain the threat. He rates a +.5 for his efforts.

In contrast, Biden has minimized the threat and was part of an administration that naïvely coddled China and allowed the US to become dangerously dependent on it.  The DefenseOne article suggests that his advisors now realize these errors and accept the need to respond.  However, given the former Vice-President’s past attitudes, he must be assigned a -.5 on this issue. 

Conclusion

There is no question that there are fundamental differences between the philosophies of the two presidential candidates on foreign policy.  Biden has been part of the globalist establishment for years while Trump has challenged it, though often by word rather than deed.  A future strategy must be based on the realism and restraint – speaking softly, not primarily by force – to be both sustainable and successful in the 21st century world.

2020 Election, Antitrust & Trade Regulation, Domestic Policy, Immigration, International Trade, Politics

An American Nationalist Voting Index – The Square Deal

Bob Claude |

This is part of a series examining the issues in the presidential election. To see other articles in the series, click on the “2020 Elections” link on the Home page

Score

Biden -.5   Trump +2

Roosevelt’s commitment to the working man was born of two incidents of violence in his life that challenged his fundamentally conservative impulses. The first was the assassination of President William McKinley by an anarchist, which led to Roosevelt’s succession to the presidency. The anarchists were the Antifa/Islamic terrorists of their time and arose out of the economic inequality and discontent that were byproducts of the Industrial Revolution. The second was his service with the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American war.  TR saw bravery in both poor cowboys and privileged Northeastern elite in the charge up San Juan Hill and believed their government owed them a “square deal” for that bravery, which he defined as follows:

But when I say am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.

At the same time, he expected the average worker to respond by contributing to his family, community and country, not simply demanding a handout from the government.

In today’s economy, we need to change the rules on economic concentration, trade and immigration to give American workers a real chance to achieve the American Dream of stable and independent financial security. Biden and Trump have verifiable records with successes and failures on these issues.  

Antitrust Law

The abuses of Big Tech have revived interest in antitrust policy and exposed its deficiencies in today’s world economy.  The problem lies in the fact we are still trying to regulate these 21st century monopolies using 19th century laws.  We learned in the 2008 financial crisis that allowing companies to become “too big to fail” created a new form of monopoly rents by allowing elites to privatize profits while socializing their risk of loss.  Meanwhile, Big Tech was finding new ways to leverage customer data to monopolize the Internet advertising and product sales market.  

The Trump Administration’s challenge to the ATT-Time Warner merger attempted to build a case against bigness itself by attacking vertical mergers.  Unfortunately, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the merger on the grounds it created useful efficiencies, which completely misses the point. They also recently filed a lawsuit against Google over their use of their monopoly power over Internet searches to raise advertising prices. However, Trump failed to pursue modernization of the antitrust laws themselves. Despite this failure, these two innovative suits earn Trump a + .5.

The Obama Administration also had an active antitrust docket and challenged several mergers with limited success.  The losses in both the Obama and Trump Administrations emphasize the need for a modernization of the rules. The Democratic House just released a comprehensive report on Big Tech’s abuses of their market power that could serve as a start for a re-tooling of the statutes. All of this suggests Biden should be given a +.5 on the issue  as well.

Trade

Protecting America and its workers from unfair international trade practices has been an area where the Trump Administration has shined.  They understand the importance of a strong manufacturing sector and have not subjugated American policy to the slow and sometimes hostile mechanisms of the World Trade Organization.  Alan Tonelson of RealityChek has pointed out that the tariffs against China and others have not prevented the manufacturing sector form succeeding during the pandemic without a loss of jobs (see his post from October 19). At the same time, the administration preserved the strategically important partnership between the US, Canada, & Mexico by concluding the U.S.- Mexico-Canada Agreement. Trump deserves a +1 for these achievements.

Biden’s record and positions are almost the polar opposite. He wants to return to the multilateral approach, ignoring America’s unique great power interest in preserving its internal economic strength.  However, he has also said he would relax the Chinese tariffs gradually and only upon concessions from the Chinese. Biden says he would prioritize developing an international coalition to challenge Chinese state capitalism as well.  The latter positions reduce his negative score to a -.5. 

Immigration

Trump’s’ actions to restrict illegal immigration have been divisive, haphazard and often poorly justified on ethnic nationalist grounds. However, they have changed the dynamic and started to limit the use of immigrant workers to compete with Americans (see my post “Immigration – The New Slavery).  However, Trump failed to seize the opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration legislation when he had a Republican Congress.  Because of this failure, he deserves only a +.5 on the issue.

Biden and the Democrats have understandably concentrated on the necessity of legalizing immigrants that have been here for years. They then oppose any real future controls on immigration and would expand the number of HIVB-style visas, thus allowing big companies to use foreign workers to continue to pay substandard wages.    As a result, they deserve a -.5 on this issue.  

Conclusion  

Many other changes in the rules of the game are necessary to give American workers the economic opportunities they deserve.  Mere income redistribution is not enough.   Americans simply want their government to give them a fair chance to compete and contribute; in short, the square deal that TR believed in and for which he fought.

2020 Election, Domestic Policy, Environment, Politics

An American Nationalist Voting Index – Conservation and the Environment

Bob Claude |
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir in Yosemite

Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as the farmer behaves with reference to his own children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.

Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism, August 31, 1910

Score

Biden +.5 Trump -.5

The two men pictured above represented different conservation philosophies reminiscent of today’s environmental movement. Unlike Roosevelt, John Muir believed that conservation and development could not be reconciled.  Despite Muir’s famous overnight camping trip with TR in Yosemite Park, he voted for William Howard Taft in the 1912 election.  Muir eventually went on to found the Sierra Club.

The contrasting philosophies of TR and Muir are reflected in the environmental approaches of Biden and Trump. However, in the end, their policy differences largely even out.

Climate Change

The differences here could not be more stark.  Trump’s denial of climate science would have met with nothing but scorn from Roosevelt, but Biden’s elevation of the Paris Accord to totemic status despite its wholly voluntary nature would also have met with his disapproval (see my post “Theodore Roosevelt and Climate Change”). This earns Trump a -.5 while Biden receives a +.5.

Environmental Regulation

The Trump Administration embarked on a campaign to spur economic growth by rolling back environmental regulation, especially regarding climate change.  In the process, they threw out a lot of long-standing rules that provided important protections. For example, there was no need to relax auto emissions standards that were not affecting car sales but reduced our gasoline consumption. The withdrawal of rules limiting toxic air emissions from major industrial polluters will expose hundreds to mercury and other known hazardous air pollutants. These unnecessary rule changes mean the Administration deserve a -.5

Biden would restore both the necessary rules, but pursue its climate agenda through more rule-makings similar to those of the high-handed and elitist Obama EPA.  This would likely be a net drag on the economy and so earns Biden  a- .5 as well.

Parks and Public Lands

Here in Montana and the West, we have a love-hate relationship with our parks and public lands. We love the spectacle and the solitude of the wilderness but resent the arbitrary limits on agriculture and other uses imposed from Washington.  For example, the Wilderness Act of 1964 allowed the federal government to temporarily designate thousands of acres off limits to even some recreational use for decades.  The Trump Administration decided it was time to finalize those designations and begin to release some of the land for other uses.  This caused a huge controversy and became an issue in the campaign. Biden has established a goal of designating 30% of US land as wilderness, which would potentially end this review.

Trump has generally been a friend of the parks system, vetoing an attempt by his Interior Secretary to raise the entrance fees to national parks to $70. He also signed the Great American Outdoors Act, which dedicated $2 billion per year to rebuilding park infrastructure (see this post for more). However, he also has reduced the size of some new national monuments previously established by President Obama.

Both Trump and Biden earn +.5 scores on this issue.

Conclusion

Conservation was dear to Theodore Roosevelt’s heart precisely because he loved America and the beauty of its land.  A true American nationalist would seek to protect that beauty for both the present and future. Trump’s denial of climate change hurts his standing on the subject, while Biden’s commitments to the Muir wing of the environmental movement suggests a potential radicalism on environmental regulation and public lands that would stifle development.  Instead, the next administration should adopt the practice of Roosevelt’s farmer and seek to responsibly reconcile the many competing uses.